More Scare Stories on the Deficit to Get Folks to Give Up Their Social Security and Medicare

Sunday, 24 April 2011 11:28

Steven Pearlstein did his part for the Wall Street crusade to get people to surrender their Social Security and Medicare. He warned readers that if we don't follow the Wall Street deficit reduction agenda, the dollar could enter a free fall. I would say that this is one of the silliest things the paper has ever published, but this is the Washington Post that we are talking about.

Anyhow, let's put on our thinking caps and try to envision what Pearlstein's scare story would look like. Currently, the euro is equal to around 1.45 dollars, there are approximately 6.5 yuan to a dollar and around 80 yen. Suppose we don't follow the Wall Streeters' wishes. Will the dollar fall to 3 to a euro, will it only be worth 3.5 yuan and 40 yen?

Does anyone think this story is plausible? We supposedly have been begging China to raise the value of its currency by 20 percent. Is China's leadership suddenly going to sit back and let the yuan rise by 100 percent? What happens to China's export market in this story? The same is the case for our other trading partners. Europe will lose its export market in the U.S. and suddenly U.S. made goods would be hyper-competitive in Europe's domestic market. Japan, Canada and everyone else would face the same situation.

These countries will not allow their economies to be destroyed by the loss of the U.S. export market and a surge of imports from the United States. They will undoubtedly take steps to stop and reverse any free fall of the dollar, if we did begin to see one.

In other words Pearlstein and the others are peddling total nonsense when they try to push this scare story. The bottom line is that they want to cut benefits to the middle class. They don't have a good story to sell a policy that will be harmful to large segments of the population, especially when the Peter Petersons of the world are making out like bandits. So they make stuff up.

As every economist knows the story of our deficit in the short-term is the downturn created by the collapse of the housing bubble. The deficit is propping up the economy following the loss of $1.2 trillion in annual demand from private sector.

The deficit story in the long-term is health care. Our health care system is out of control. Fixing health care would end the deficit problem, but this would reduce the income of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and other powerful interest groups. So, the Washington Post would rather just see people go with out health care. Hey, someone's got to pay.